“We are on this journey because we hate traveling.”
A ship that doesn’t move. A cruise with no destination, no land in sight. No harbor—only a resonance chamber folding inwards. A body devouring itself.
“Hakunamalaria — not Hakunamatata.”
The voices of passengers and crew appear like a fractured radio play—sonic debris from a journey without direction. They weave through the live music of a one-man entertainer: a relic, a synthetic oracle. He is captain, vehicle, and destination in one. Playing synthesizers, singing in microtonal Auto-Tune choirs, his voice modulated through artificial larynx generators—a warped echo between spectacle and collapse.
“I’m here because I want to be eaten.”
A microphone enters through the nose and descends into the stomach. The journey ends here. The body’s interior becomes a stage. An ur-opera. This is where listening begins.
”CRUISE”
(Script/Transcription)
ATTENDANT:
Your journey is about to begin. Before we set sail, you’ll find small white bags tucked discreetly in various places. Use them if the feeling rises within you. It sometimes does.
This isn’t travel as you’ve known it. There is no horizon to follow, no shore to anticipate. Instead, we descend inward, into the dark, warm folds of a living mechanism. Lean back. Allow yourself to be absorbed, devoured, and transformed.
As the journey unfolds, you will come to understand the true nature of the Corporation: the captain, the vessel, and the destination… they are one. And soon, you will be, too.
And now, the Captain will take it from here. He has prepared a little song for you.
Bon voyage. The journey is yours, and you are ours.
THE CAPTAIN'S SONG:
Cruising, cruising on an ocean
that looks like a mountain:
High and round a dense like blood
of a featherless dog
TRAVELER 1:
I find eating disgusting. I mean I don't mind when others eat, no, not all. I just don't want to eat, myself. I'm hear, because I want to be eaten. I want to be swallowed down and end up in someone's belly. You know – full circle. That's where it all started. I think it's only natural when the story ends where it once began, right?
TRAVELER 2:
No, this is not my first cruise. I once went with another cruise line, and that was a total disaster. Well, I liked in the beginning their ecological approach. You know, the fleet was powered almost entirely with human byproducts. At least that's what they said. It smelled a little funny sometimes when the wind was blowing from the wrong direction, but in general, I found that very smart. You know there are countries in the world, poor countries, that have zero resources, like no oil, no gold, no diamonds, but really everyone has to shit—every day. At least once. Like a hen lays an egg every day, eh? So I liked that approach, to turn shit into energy. True alchemy, eh!
But everything else was a total catastrophe, Madonna. First of all, the mosquitoes. Yes, they did tell us about mosquitoes, but they made it sound like "mojitos." And why would anyone in the world mind a place that's "buzzing with mojitos"? I mean, juice me up, bitch. I can handle some mojitos, hakuna matata, but fuck that! What we got was hakunamalaria. And that lake! That lake! There was this guide, a native, who went like: "Who wants to go to the ache?? Who wants to dive
into the deepest ache you've ever seen?" and everybody was like: "Yeah, cool, let's go for a swim." Of course, we thought that guide actually meant "lake." You know, how French people say "eight" when they actually mean "hate"? Well, that supposed lake. That "lake" we were taken to was literally pure "ache." Real pain. No, you have no idea. We were so much in pain. Porco Dio. "Aching!" One hundred percent aching—and zero, zero laking. I swear to you, Santa Maria Immacolata.
SISTERS IN BLISTERS:
Sisters in blisters, you who love to travel in retarded space-time.
Hungry chasers, ghost eaters. Your appetite is gentrified. Your stomachs bloat in the belly of the boat.
Gift bagged and jet lagged. Let's go to the acid lakes. Up the hills in flaccid aches. Just beyond this fatigued craving. the mystique lies waiting.
Heat strokes in the palm groves. The campsite lays in cramps all night. The parasite who bit you left a wound that'll stay with you forever like the moon.
ACTIVITY COORDINATOR:
We are all on this journey because we hate traveling. We despise explorers and pioneers—and, of course, there’s no need to even talk about tourists or vacationers. Honestly, traveling was the beginning of the end. Everywhere humans set foot, they left nothing but destruction, didn’t they?
The concept of traveling—expansion, the claiming of outer spaces—must be entirely rethought. Our ancestors, Europeans who circumnavigated the globe and set foot on new continents, were driven by two cardinal fears: the fear of drowning and the fear of being devoured—by beasts or so-called cannibals. And it is precisely there, in my opinion, that they missed their chance.
But we are here to correct that failure. Our journey is one of drowning, of being devoured. We surrender ourselves to be consumed. We return to the primordial place, the origin we perhaps never should have left.
We, the separated, lonely beings who have fragmented ourselves through time and space, are coming home. We are becoming unborn. We dissolve, returning to the boundless, the formless.
In the words of the Zen master Bankei Yōtaku:
"The unborn has no separation, no relation, no parts. The unborn is unlimited by time. It has no relation to time and space. It is shapeless. The unborn is form, form is the Unborn. The Unborn is real."
© Nico Sauer, 2025
Your journey is about to begin. Before we set sail, you’ll find small white bags tucked discreetly in various places. Use them if the feeling rises within you. It sometimes does.
This isn’t travel as you’ve known it. There is no horizon to follow, no shore to anticipate. Instead, we descend inward, into the dark, warm folds of a living mechanism. Lean back. Allow yourself to be absorbed, devoured, and transformed.
As the journey unfolds, you will come to understand the true nature of the Corporation: the captain, the vessel, and the destination… they are one. And soon, you will be, too.
And now, the Captain will take it from here. He has prepared a little song for you.
Bon voyage. The journey is yours, and you are ours.
THE CAPTAIN'S SONG:
Cruising, cruising on an ocean
that looks like a mountain:
High and round a dense like blood
of a featherless dog
TRAVELER 1:
I find eating disgusting. I mean I don't mind when others eat, no, not all. I just don't want to eat, myself. I'm hear, because I want to be eaten. I want to be swallowed down and end up in someone's belly. You know – full circle. That's where it all started. I think it's only natural when the story ends where it once began, right?
TRAVELER 2:
No, this is not my first cruise. I once went with another cruise line, and that was a total disaster. Well, I liked in the beginning their ecological approach. You know, the fleet was powered almost entirely with human byproducts. At least that's what they said. It smelled a little funny sometimes when the wind was blowing from the wrong direction, but in general, I found that very smart. You know there are countries in the world, poor countries, that have zero resources, like no oil, no gold, no diamonds, but really everyone has to shit—every day. At least once. Like a hen lays an egg every day, eh? So I liked that approach, to turn shit into energy. True alchemy, eh!
But everything else was a total catastrophe, Madonna. First of all, the mosquitoes. Yes, they did tell us about mosquitoes, but they made it sound like "mojitos." And why would anyone in the world mind a place that's "buzzing with mojitos"? I mean, juice me up, bitch. I can handle some mojitos, hakuna matata, but fuck that! What we got was hakunamalaria. And that lake! That lake! There was this guide, a native, who went like: "Who wants to go to the ache?? Who wants to dive
into the deepest ache you've ever seen?" and everybody was like: "Yeah, cool, let's go for a swim." Of course, we thought that guide actually meant "lake." You know, how French people say "eight" when they actually mean "hate"? Well, that supposed lake. That "lake" we were taken to was literally pure "ache." Real pain. No, you have no idea. We were so much in pain. Porco Dio. "Aching!" One hundred percent aching—and zero, zero laking. I swear to you, Santa Maria Immacolata.
SISTERS IN BLISTERS:
Sisters in blisters, you who love to travel in retarded space-time.
Hungry chasers, ghost eaters. Your appetite is gentrified. Your stomachs bloat in the belly of the boat.
Gift bagged and jet lagged. Let's go to the acid lakes. Up the hills in flaccid aches. Just beyond this fatigued craving. the mystique lies waiting.
Heat strokes in the palm groves. The campsite lays in cramps all night. The parasite who bit you left a wound that'll stay with you forever like the moon.
ACTIVITY COORDINATOR:
We are all on this journey because we hate traveling. We despise explorers and pioneers—and, of course, there’s no need to even talk about tourists or vacationers. Honestly, traveling was the beginning of the end. Everywhere humans set foot, they left nothing but destruction, didn’t they?
The concept of traveling—expansion, the claiming of outer spaces—must be entirely rethought. Our ancestors, Europeans who circumnavigated the globe and set foot on new continents, were driven by two cardinal fears: the fear of drowning and the fear of being devoured—by beasts or so-called cannibals. And it is precisely there, in my opinion, that they missed their chance.
But we are here to correct that failure. Our journey is one of drowning, of being devoured. We surrender ourselves to be consumed. We return to the primordial place, the origin we perhaps never should have left.
We, the separated, lonely beings who have fragmented ourselves through time and space, are coming home. We are becoming unborn. We dissolve, returning to the boundless, the formless.
In the words of the Zen master Bankei Yōtaku:
"The unborn has no separation, no relation, no parts. The unborn is unlimited by time. It has no relation to time and space. It is shapeless. The unborn is form, form is the Unborn. The Unborn is real."
© Nico Sauer, 2025